What's the most euphoric moment of your life?

Orbital doing Chime at Glasto 1999, with fireworks going off everywhere
First kiss, somewhere in the Loire Valley, August 1994
Finding I'd finally got out of my soulcrushing old job, Feburary 2005
England 5 - Germany 1 September 2001
DJ Pikey Clothing Stall, Glastonbury 2004

I am maybe a nerd.

-- ken c (pykachu10...), May 8th, 2005.

best ever.

Most recent: 12" of fresh in an empty chute off the back of Snowmass.

All-time? L--- showing up at my cabin door at 4am in the morning, saying that kissing probably would have been a good idea a little while back. She was wrong. It was a GREAT idea.

(x=post me)

--Drinking coffee & Bailey's on top of a riverboat on the Mississippi a couple years ago, just an inexplicably perfect moment.

Daft Punk at Tribal Gathering '97 and most of that event in general

scaling the fence at Glastonbury 1999 and wandering right into the Green Fields for the first time just as the Sun went down

drunk and dancing to 'World In Motion' at The Water Rats in Kings X a few hours after England beat Germany 5-1 in September 2001

Erol Alkan and Freelance Hellraiser at Glastonbury 2002

playing 'The Sideboard Song' by Chas n' Dave at the end of my first ever proper DJ set at a club and people, including the bar staff, going mental

arriving at Glastonbury last year on the coach with lots of friends on a perfect sunny day

although my favourite recent non-music related one would be flying into Newark Airport for the first time last year, Manhattan skyscrapers hoving into view in the early evening mist as the plane descended.

Nice.

Bowlie Tweekender, 1999, Belle and Sebastian covering "The Kids Are All Right". It was like the best amount of fun at the end of weekend almost entirely consisting of fun.

Both of Henrik Larsson's equalisers against Porto in the UEFA Cup Final in Seville - the thought that we really were going to win a European final in my lifetime...(actually I could fill this entire thread with moments purely from the football, but this is the one that stands out)

Pulp, Glastonbury, 1995, Common People/the first outing for Sorted for Es and Whizz (actually that same Glasto I had the total euphoric feeling walking along and hearing Templehed by Transglobal Underground from somewhere, but Pulp probably tops it for the sharedness of it all - the Templehed thing was just me and my pal grinning like fools)

Being proposed to - I bawled like a big blubbering bairn I was that happy.

and/or

the very moment after my son was born after 15 hours of labor (like an explosion of moonlight in the room)...

Ooh! That's a good one! I'd put my first First Ave show up there, too.

...now if I could just remember who it was.

My band playing a private showcase for Shel Talmy in 1994. That was euphoric in a different way.

Having people cheer when I walked across the stage to get my PhD in 1999. Again, a different kind of euphoria.

I remember being strangely euphoric walking through the Jardin de Luxembourg in Paris one sunny day with that U2 "Beautiful Day" song in my head. It was just after I had nearly been blindsided by a speeding car crossing a street next to the garden. I didn't know the street was two ways and was looking the other way as I walked, but for some unknown reason I stopped short with my arm out, the instant before it went by. It was one of those little compact cars and I had dust on my fingertips from the roof of it!

:-)

waking up in a hotel in gurjaani after driving there in the dark the night before, opening the window, and seeing OMG THE CAUCASUS!

Also in 1999 -- the first time the Spurs won the NBA Championship. (A lot of good happened in my life in 1999. Prince's lyrics proved prophetic in my life that year!)

Going around Vegas at 1 a.m. after yet another Duran concert, racing from the Mandalay Bay to other hotels with someone I'd met at the concert, loudly singing as we hurried past tourists who were probably thinking we were insane. My ultimate destination was my hotel room. I stopped to have a very late-night dinner, though, because I was hungry and just could not yet get to sleep.

Or, taking turns DJing with a friend at an '80s-theme party in 2000. He lost the crowd and wondered if I had something to bring it back. I did: The "Jeffersons" theme into "Walk the Dinosaur."

Successfully lighting first fart at age 13 (captured on video). Same video has me smoking weed in my underwear (one ofthe first times) and eating beef jerky, rocking bakc and forth - fast forwarding the whole segment is this beautiful spastic loop of chewing and rocking and laughing.

Driving around with fly girls and real thugs, rolling so obnoxious, pulling up to the restaurant, man I'm about to EAT.

- getting my first flat in Central London

- connecting to the internet at home for the first time (via mosaic and compuserve)

Or later, during Who's Got The Crack? at the line "I wanna be reckless, but I'm feeling so uptight", as the song rolls gently to the top of the rollercoaster.

When the little plane flew to "Japan" and then the narrator guy went "Round 1, Fight!", I actually said "I'm so happy!" out loud. It was the first time ever in my life that I felt complete and utter happiness.

drugs kind of ruin this question, or just make the answers too numerous and simultaneously difficult to remember.

maybe Glastonbury 2003, on the Saturday, it was an incredibly sunny day and it seemed to go on forever.

the day I finished school has to be fairly high on the list. or the day I got my exam results, that was good too.

Take one E ;-p

Get one kitten.

:(

I find it a bit sad that so many ILXors' most euphoric moment of their entire lives was watching football on the telly, but no matter.

No-one's actually specified they weren't actually at the matches they mentioned, have they? I was at the UEFA Cup Final, but even if I wasn't, having invested several thousand pounds as well as a lot of emotional energy in Celtic over the years, I'm damn well entitled to a bit of euphoria when they do something good.

Or

The night that Darren Emerson DJed in the Ormonde. It was a mental night, and everyone's shoes were covered in brick dust and they wouldn't let you bring water bottles onto the dance floor for some reason and the bouncers wouldn't let you sit down at the side of the floor but no-one cared (or else I didn't care that people cared) and when he played Born Slippy there was utter chaos and I lifted my face up to the lights and it was magical.

Okay, now you're just talkin' crazy. THERE ARE NO KITTENS IN HELL, YOU MAD MAD MAN!

- my wedding day, when everyone was going home and I had one last moment on my own out on the balcony and I looked up and saw two shooting stars;

- Mardi Gras the first time with Jenn - from the first set of beads we caught at the parade to the last golden sunshot moments in the Quarter, all of it was pure magic;

- when I found out I was pregnant with Spencer... and then when I held him for the first time and he looked up at me and I realized I was someone's mum.

Ally, the first day of Bowlie involved queuing for hours, Teenage Fanclub and the Delgados being not very good, and you falling asleep whilst Markelby tried to recreate Las Vegas in our chalet. Is this the best you can do (or is my chronology fuXored?)

Most of my other euphoric moments involve music or traveling. My entire first trip to the UK was one 10-day-long euphoric rush, with the highlights being landing at Heathrow, meeting Jane Fox, seeing Belle & Sebastian and Bis, and various rail stations. Seeing the Raincoats in 1994 was amazing, as was Fugazi's closing set at the IPU convention in Olympia. Both times the whole room seemed to rise straight up in the air. No, I wasn't on drugs.

on that note:

-Michigan winning the NCAA Final Four in Ice Hockey in 1996, for the first time in about 50 years.

-Michigan scoring the winning goal in the very last second of a nail-biter tie game with Colorado College, Oct 1994. It was the first college hockey game i ever attended, and i wound up going to as many games as i could for 6 straight years. i brought a cowbell to the games and would lead the ever-increasingly-sophomoric chants against the other team.

-Sixteen Horsepower doing "Twenty Four Hours" for an encore the first time i saw them. it seemed so perfect.

-seeing Dick Dale for the first time, and him playing "Third Stone from the Sun." This was around April 1998, and i realized at that moment that I wanted to devote the rest of my life to live music.

-three days after September the 11th, we were in Chicago at the Empty Bottle(since our CMJ plans had gone awry). Bible of the Devil, then Easy Action, then Dead Moon played. Dead Moon ended with shredding thru "Communication Breakdown", and all the pain & tension & shock of the previous 3 days somehow unlocked and began to ebb away.

-the first time the Cherry Valence played at my bar in Ypsilanti in 2002.

-oh yeah, and seeing Star Wars at the movie theater in 1997.

Man, did that feeling fade fast.

please be joking!

come to think of it, one of my most euphoric moments was at a dead moon show too.

every walk home from the nightclub when i still lived on the island between 1995 and 1997. drunk or sober, pulled or failed miserably, still or gale, two lonely lovely hours of nothing but sea and cliffs and total darkness was a privilege and a peace.

ringleading two hours of drunken singsong of the famous green army from a tabletop in poznan in 2012

walking a girl awkwardly home after a risky night but waiting long enough to see her turn and smile before heading in the door

coming over the top of the pyrenees in a tiny peugeot and suddenly what seems like most of the world pop up at us like an instant fairytale

reading and rereading an email notifying me of a big promotion as my mates lost their shit all around me

four nutmeg finishes in four shots in a five minute five goal win

Walking out of hospital a few days after a severe asthma attack in summer 2015, and looking into a park by the bus-stop on the way home.

For a few moments it felt incredible and wonderful to be part of everything that was going on: birds singing, leaves rustling, kids playing, clouds moving, trees waving, grass growing.

And all the other usual preoccupations like work, money, partners etc just disappeared.

first time i got excelsiored

This is the most depressing question I've ever pondered.

euphoria is nice enough while it lasts, but it is rare and it is fleeting. don't get down on yourself thinking you've had a euphoria-poor existence compared to everyone else.

Winning my league's baseball championship at the age of 12 in 1974. (We'd finished last in the regular season.) Threw my glove 25 feet in the air.

I'm 55. Sad.

i had an idea

i forget what it was

Playing Seymour in a two-week production of "Little Shop of Horrors" in high school.

Falling in love.

My Mom recovering from Guillain-Barre syndrome.

Aimless is correct that it can be all too fleeting, and when it does hit - it can be like the harshest dopamine rush ever.

a lot of shared moments with my ex wife

hiking through the canadian rockies for days

my time in kyoto (walking around the city, going through the philosopher's way to ginkaku ji, walking to fushimi inari, walking to yasaka jinja at dusk)

carving pumpkins in oct 2012

xmas 2012

those are the ones that come to mind

Great thread...I enjoy other people's euphoria. This one is beautiful in its own way, and as satisfying as a short story:

it was our first 'date', we'd been through hell to get here - breakups with others, miscommunication, distance. she travelled 200 miles to spend the weekend, though i thought she was just staying the night. she took me to her favourite indian restaurant, where the waiters looked at us funny because i was white and she was indian. she had a black silk flower around her wrist, and as we rode the bus to see the show, our corduroys rubbed together and we joked about them locking.
the show was amazing. It was about twenty minutes in that we started kissing. i remember how her spine felt as my hand ran up it, the warmth of her skin. at one point, we just held each other for about ten minutes, just so glad to finally be together. we walked back through kentish town, and she threw a 20p piece into the river and made a wish. we caught a cab back to my flat, which i'd just moved into that weekend. i played smokey robinson records, and we talked, and we talked. it was about 5am when we went to bed. i couldn't believe how entirely beautiful she was. we made love and then held each other as birds sang out the window. we spent the next 48 hours in bed, pausing only to cook, to help decorate my spartan flat, and to go for a long autumn afternoon walk over the common. on sunday, i accompanied her to the station to go home, and we took my favourite photograph ever, in the booth at euston (the first in a series of amelie motifs that would reveal themselves throughout the relationship).
my euphoric moment lasted about 48 hours, and it was wonderful. it all ended horribly enough within a few months, but its still my favourite memory. to feel that happy seems so unreal now.

yeah i read it through before bumping and its a goodun

Age five or so, rocking out to a 45 of the Osmonds' "Yo Yo" in the basement of a twice-my-age neighbour girl, alongside several of her friends.

Would make for a good Bob Seger song.

2012 Orlando International Fringe Festival. I was performing in a mashup of the musicals Ann1e and Sweeney T0dd and playing Rooster Hannigan. took an entire week off, socialized like a motherfucker, basically open til close every night (which, if you know my not-so-outgoing ass, is saying a lot). got a positive review in the local paper for my performance, threw a cast party for 10+ in a room big enough for two people that got the managers called on us three times BY A BACHELORETTE PARTY....made $250 doing the show (still to date the only play I've actually received pay for). day after the festival ended, I got offered the promotion I'd applied for and my salary went up $10k.

everything since then has been a grand disappointment.